Amsterdam, Oct 21: The Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal has indicted four Serbian generals, including the current Assistant Interior Minister in Serbia and Montenegro, for alleged atrocities against thousands of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. The indictment, confirmed by a UN judge last week but released yesterday, accuses the men of five counts of war crimes, including murder, persecution, deportation and inhumane treatment during the Serbian crackdown on ethnic Albanians in 1998 and 1999 to quell their independence movement in the southern province.
Assistant Interior Minister General Sreten Lukic, who was the assistant Serbian police chief during the Kosovo war, declined comment.
The other three suspects are former Yugoslav Army General Nebojsa Pavkovic; Vladimir Lazarevic, the commander of Yugoslav army forces in Kosovo`s capital Pristina; and Vlastimir Djordjevic, the chief of police forces which operated in Kosovo under the Serbian interior ministry.
Pavkovic and Lazarevic live in Serbia and Montenegro, which replaced Yugoslavia following a decade of Balkan conflicts presided by then-president Slobodan Milosevic. Djordjevic is believed to have fled to Russia shortly after Milosevic`s ouster in October 2000.
It was not immediately known if the suspects would surrender to the UN War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague, or if Serbian authorities would arrest them and hand them over to the court.
Bureau Report